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Ovid Troubleshooting

These guidelines are for Dartmouth College Library staff to use in assisting patrons with the Ovid system.

Which databases are accessed from the Ovid system?

The databases mounted on the Ovid system are:

MEDLINE

BIOSIS Previews

Journals@Ovid

Books@Ovid

International Index to Film Periodicals

FIAF Databases

International Index to TV Periodicals

International Political Science Abstracts

How do I access Ovid?

If you are unsure about the current URL for Ovid, please consult either the Library Catalog or the Biomedical Libraries web site. Ovid supports IP-based authentication for on-campus users as well as WebAuth, certs and SideCar/Kerberos for off-campus users.

Ovid doesn't seem to be working; what should I do?

If you are unable to access Ovid, try to isolate the problem:

Off-campus users should be sure they have a cert, can use WebAuth, or have installed the VPN software. See the Off-campus Access guidelines for further information.

Can you get into other Web resources? If not, it is likely a general network problem. Network outages are reported to the BlitzMail Bulletin: "Computing - Outages" and to DartPulse.

Is the same problem happening from other locations? You may want to get on the phone and try calling another reference desk. See if they are able to access Ovid. If they can, then the problem is probably local to your equipment or network connection.

Try again in a few minutes.

Is it Saturday evening? Ovid performs systems maintenance on Saturday evenings between 9pm and midnight, ET. Ovid may not be available during those hours.

Is it a Kerberos/SideCar problem? Kerberos is no longer supported by Dartmouth College Computing Services. You'll need to use the VPN if you are connecting from off-campus.

[DLTG STAFF only] For trouble-shooting the ovidweb.cgi code or the Ovid userids file, refer to the information in "giza:/data/websites/diglib/ovidweb/README". Sometimes Biomed (usually Peggy) needs to know the Ovid ID for a user. Look the name up in the DND and get the value from the UID field. Go to giza:/data/websites/diglib/ovidweb/users and look the UID value up in the file users.lst. The second field in that line is the Ovid id.